Caramelizing my life

Approximately one year ago, I had an unhealthy obsession with caramelization.  It started with some onions I caramelized for French onion soup one night, and from there it snowballed out of control.  For some reason, everything just tasted better when sugar was added to it (whilst sweating in a pan).  Particularly onions, but from memory I caramelized many, many things that in my simple mind no doubt benefited from the oxidation of sugar, but according to my friends this fact is simply untrue.

On Wednesday night I based my dinner around the opportunity to caramelize onions, so I thought it was worth mentioning.  I should also mention that when I made the tortilla for my paella night last Wednesday, it took every fibre of my being not to caramelize the onions that went into it.  Every.  Fibre. Of. My. Being.

Before I get to what I had for dinner on Wednesday, I shall inform you of what I got up to on said day, which was a beautiful late-summer London day.  This is worth mentioning, because the proceeding days have felt like winter.  Blah.   Clea and I decided the night before that we would hang out today and try and make the most of a 'free day' in London.  I suggested we go to Cockfosters, because... Cockfosters.  I then decided at some point the morning of that it was too far and not worth travelling all the way to the top of the Piccadilly line just to laugh at the tube station sign, so I suggest we go to Spitafields markets.   This was a complete bust, because all they sell on Wednesdays is women's clothing.  After perusing lady garments that suited neither Clea nor myself, we decided to have cocktails for lunch, with simple salads on the side at some decidedly shit but trendy restaurant in Spitafields.  We then tried to walk from Liverpool St to Shoreditch.  We found Shoreditch High Street, but it is not much of a High Street.  We then walked to Old Street and caught the tube to Angel in search of more adventures.  We went to a bookstore, where I bought Jamie Oliver's cookbook Happy Days with the Naked Chef and then we ended up having another cocktail.  Clea went home at about 5pm, at which point I was sufficiently liquored up and got that familiar urge to caramelize.
On this night of nights, I also decided to cook dinner (and just for myself) as opposed to eat takeaways and go to see the Shout Out Louds with Claire.  Very unlike me, but I'm glad I did it.  You need to have those kind of nights every so often.

Post-cocktails, off I waddled to Waitrose, where I walked around for a while until I settled on cooking and eating stuffed portabello mushrooms filled with basil, pine nuts, hummus and caramelized onions, topped with Smoked applewood cheddar.  Side note:  Smoked applewood cheddar is quite possibly my new favourite cheese.  It is utterly delicious.  Smoky and cheesy?  Winning combination.  The only real preparation for this meal was the onions, which I sweated off with some garlic before adding white wine, balsamic vinegar and some muscavado sugar.   Simple.  The mushrooms turned out quite delicious, but my decision to serve them on top of a rocket salad smothered in a balsamic mustard dressing was a bad call.  Too many flavours that ended up clashing in my pie-hole.  It did look nice though and the mushrooms were quite delicious.

The finished product

The raw product

The caramelized product

Update:  I had these for lunch yesterday sans the overpowering salad and they were much more deliciousness.  I even offered up a piece to a chef.  He was a bit put off by the look of them at first because of the mushroomy mushness of them, but he said they were delicious and was surprised I made them.  Good work, me.

delicious gu

A much appreciated discovery from last weeks dinner party:  GU.  Some British dessert company whose specialty is chocolate treats.  Tara, one of the bartenders at my work rocked up to the dinner party with these shot-glass shaped cups filled with chocolate pudding.  HOMG.  Amazing.  There is currently an empty shot-glass sitting next to my bed.  An unfortunate result of a 17 hour shift at work on Monday night.  But I digress, today I discovered Gu chocolate souffle.   All you need to do is bake it in the oven for 13 minutes.  SO DELISH.  And super cheap.  I will never bake a chocolate souffle again.  Not that I've ever baked one before.

Finally, just because it bears mentioning:  Monday marked a first ever in my hospitality career:  a 17 hour shift.  I started work at 9am and left the building just shy of 2am.  Say what you want, but that's pretty hardcore.  I was so tired that at the end of it I called a taxi to take me to bed, got up in arms about them trying to charge me and extra 3 pounds, and walked home.  I am aiming to do a 24 hour shift one day.  My restaurant manager is currently on vacation so I have the run of the place, essentially for the first time.  It's going relatively well, I think.  I'm sure things will fall to pieces soon enough, check back on Monday when I recollect the carnage of the week that was.